So here is the question. How can we as individuals and collectively as a society liberate our lives from this forced occupation, and rather than forcibly fill up the emptiness of our time with pointless busyness, do work each day that we find good and meaningful?
Is that possible?
Is it too much to ask, in the twenty-first century, that we structure society in such a way that everyone has that opportunity?
Or is it inevitable that the trends of the Industrial Age and Information Age continue to force more of us into tedious, repetitive jobs in which we’re alienated from our own labor? And that we’ll compete desperately for even these tedious jobs, knowing that the alternative is unemployment and thus destitution?
Is it inevitable that most of us find ourselves devoting our lives to the bureaucratic busyness of so-called bullshit jobs?
I’m struggling to envision a functioning economy in which communities are empowered to manage their own natural resources sustainably, facilitate their own energy and food sovereignty, and negotiate trade relationships on fair terms with other communities. I envision a world in which individuals aren’t dependent on megacorporations to grant them menial jobs just to scrape by, turning the majority of the population into modern-day indentured servants who are virtually voiceless within a political and economic oligarchy.
I don’t know what that world looks like. But that’s the vision inspiring my current philosophical struggles (as farm work dominates my physical struggles).